Getting a Job in the FS

Recently, from the Blog...

The following is an excerpt from the blog, Beau Geste, Mon Ami. Larry is an Economic Officer currently on post in Rome. His interesting take in this post on the art of cable writing is a great introduction into the life of an Economic Officer in the Foreign Service. Take some time to read through his [...]

While it may be true that we compete against ourselves, especially in the oral exams, on the written exam, the score is based on our relative position on a standardized curve (T-scores), meaning that the mean number of questions answered correctly may have less or more correlation with final mean T-scores based on how representative the population of test [...]

Legislation that significantly reduces Foreign Service pay would hinder the State Department’s ability to conduct its mission, observers say.
The Senate Appropriations committee late last month approved a funding bill for 2012 that would cut State’s budget by 8 percent, while the House Appropriations committee is holding on to legislation that would reduce funding by 18 percent [...]

Veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker can handle Islamist insurgencies, hostile heads of state and management of some of the world’s largest embassies. But what’s he going to do about the cats?
The new leader of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has probably already walked past (and possibly petted?) Gordo, Freckles, Dusty, Ferdinand and Maria Teresa or [...]

Micah Zenko points out in a recent piece for Foreign Policy the glaring lack of women in Washington’s foreign policy community. Searching for numbers to support her assumptions, Zenko found less than 30 percent of policy and leadership positions held by women when she reviewed Washington’s ten most prominent think tanks.
The Center for Strategic and [...]

The following piece was written by former Ambassador to Morocco, Ambassador Marc Ginsberg for the Huffington Post:
“Never take America for granted!” Words my American parents drilled into me during my formative years growing up in the Middle East. Is it possible to become more patriotic when the United States is far over the horizon? Perhaps.
Just [...]